Philosophy by the Way

Random quote Philosophy is the entirety of all primitive propositions that are supposed to be true without evidence from the various scienc...

Passengers waiting for the train in a metro stattion in Rotterdam You find it in many big cities: the metro, underground, subway, tube, or h...

Random quote If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the t...

I have written here already more about him, but in these days that violence and power are so on the foreground in the news, I cannot resist ...

Random quote Conducting our public discourse as if it were possible to outsource moral and political judgment to markets, or to experts and...

La Gleize, Belgium: Monument to the victims of the Second World War Many people, including most politicians, are talking about violence only...

Random quote Tyrants are only great because we are on our knees. Étienne de La Boétie (1530-1563)

John the Baptist Fountain in Basel Montaigne loved travelling. Usually he travelled for practical purposes; for his work (he has been a judg...

Random quote The common genetic element with the largest known effect on propensity for violence is the Y chromosome, but we don’t take its...

Erasmus's Gravestone in the Minster in Basel When I was on holiday in the southern part of the Alsace, in eastern France, a few weeks ag...

Random quote If you want to have good ideas you must have many ideas. Most of them will be wrong, and what you have to learn is which ones ...

The monument to the migrant workers in Utrecht, Netherlands Montaigne is of the past and Montaigne is of the present. Many of his observatio...

Random quote A person will be all the more learned as he becomes more aware of the fact that he knows nothing. Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464...

Sometimes I would wish that all politicians were Pinocchios, for then we would know when they were lying. For the story of Pinocchio tells u...

Random quote The lie reigns. Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands (1938-. Queen from 1980-2013)

The choir receives the applaus after a beautiful performance of the opera Boris Godunov  by Modest Mussorgsky by the Dutch National Opera in...

Random quote The difference between a good prince and a tyrant is that the prince is obedient to the law, and rules his people by a will wh...

Women of Lancashire. British recruitment poster, First World War, 1915.  Source: Imperial War Museums , Image: IWM (Art.IWM PST 6061). Since...

Random quote Those who have no self-confidence call for the big man, the dictator, and for a dictator, people shout almost everywhere today...

The naturalistic fallacy is usually seen as the inverse of the moralistic fallacy, though some see the latter as a variant of the naturalis...

Random quote Those who do not think themselves are thought by others. Rudolf Rocker (1873-1958), German anarchist and writer

Now that I have given quite a lot of attention to morality in my last blogs (and not only in my last blogs). I think that it’s the right mom...

Random quote We don't sink quickly but regularly. Maurits Dekker (1896-1962), Dutch author

In his A Treatise of Human Nature David Hume famously wrote: “’ Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to ...

Random quote When a communist opponent said that the proletariat will determine what we’ll do, Albert de Jong replied: “When you say that t...

Oradour-sur-Glane, France: Massacred and destroyed by the Nazis out of revenge,  10 June 1944. Being moral or exercising power. Often it is ...